“Your house won’t be yours anymore!” Effects of Misinformation, News Use, and Media Trust on Chile’s Constitutional Referendum

Abstract

News consumption and voting behavior are interlinked and particularly important in elections where traditional political cleavages are not easily applicable. This relationship becomes more complex and uncertain in contexts of low trust in the news media and high levels of misinformation circulating in different news ecosystems. In this study, we test an indirect path between differentiated news media consumption and voting choices, mediated by belief in misinformation, and moderated by news media trust. Our data come from a two-wave panel survey of 1,332 respondents, conducted in Chile before and after the 2022 Constitutional Referendum, a political event that captured international attention after a constitutional proposal was rejected in a process initiated with high public support. Our analyses found that news media consumption significantly affected voting preferences in the referendum, not only indirectly through the acceptance of misinformation, but also directly, suggesting that news organizations might act, intentionally or not, as soundboards of misinformation. These findings suggest that countries with enough press freedom to rely on the news media to be informed but also a high concentration of ownership, topics, and angles covered, might become fertile soil for misinformation to spread in the form of professional news coverage, instead of fabricated, easy-to-spot fake pieces circulating in dubious websites or on social media.